Canon T1i memory card choices from SanDisk

The (unofficial) Canon T1i Blog has a recent post regarding SDHC memory cards for the Canon T1i. Unfortunately, it lacks an indepth analysis; a point about card capacity can be misleading (they quoted large JPEGs, but not RAW shooting which will be of interest to the dedicated amateur). In this blog post I'll attempt to answer the question: Between rated speed and capacity, which is more important?

First the good news: The blog recommends the 20 MByte/sec SDHC Class 6 Extreme III 8 GB cards, which give a decent price to performance ratio, with a focus on maximum capacity, i.e., being able to store double the shots of a 4GB model. You could certainly do worse than shoot with those cards. However, they're slightly more expensive than my option, and you may not use all the space in any trip, which would cancel out the reason for buying the larger cards (keep in mind that, unlike lenses, memory cards are not a long-term investment).

The bad news: The blogger doesn't mention the rebates currently available. Adorama.com provides a PDF download on their site to mail in with barcodes from the packages of their three-packs, shaving nearly half the price off the two deals I'm going to look at. Of course, you don't need to buy from them if you don't want to; the rebate lists other qualifying e-tailers.

The ugly: There's more to consider than simply "bigger is better;" what's important to the photographer. Furthermore, simply pushing Class 6 without noticing the huge differences (advertised, not tested!) in data rate is giving incomplete guidance; yep, Extreme III is no guarantee of the best speed. No worries though: Here is...the rest of the story.

When I went to get SDHC cards for my own T1i, I wanted to balance speed and capacity against price. Speed is a priority for the movie mode (slow cards fill the camera's buffer, and when that's full, video recording ends until it's saved to the card) - a mode which, so far, I've not needed to use; instead, I've noticed the speed pays off when previewing pictures still on the camera body - it's fast enough that I can easily separate good shots from the bad, and delete them right off the camera. In fact, turning on the camera and getting Windows to recognize it is by far the longest part of the deal (and even that's just a few seconds).

How many shots can I take with a 4GB card?
Let's clear up a minor point of contention from that blog. Their quoted figure of 600 shots is just for the largest-size high quality JPEGs. This is good for most purposes, but if you want to print your photos, or do fancy stuff like correcting chromatic abberation introduced by your cheap-o 18-55mm EF-S kit lens, you'll want RAW.

The T1i estimates you'll get 127 shots in RAW + high quality JPEG mode with a factory-fresh SanDisk 4GB SDHC Class 6 Extreme III; the T1i manual estimates you'll get about 18 minutes of video (I believe that's the 720p HD mode, but don't quote me on it). Switching the camera to RAW only gives 163 shots estimated. We're talking about 15 Mbytes for RAW shooting (4752x3168), and about (this next figure is based off my own shooting experience) 20 Mbytes for RAW + high quality JPEG shots. The JPEGs I've found to be between 4 and 5 Mbytes; the RAWs account for the rest.

The "ultimate" SDHC Class 6 card would be an 8GB (or larger) Extreme III 30 MB/sec edition (recognizable by its red label, as opposed to the 20 MByte/sec version's flat shades), but that will cost you an arm and a leg. If you need that card, you certainly aren't in need of my guidance; you'll be making use of every last shot and still swapping cards, and using the fast speed to save time transferring their pictures to the PC (of course, users that need the space are probably using cameras that can use the larger, physically and bit-wise, Compact Flash format - which SanDisk feels already warrants an "Extreme IV" label, giving it a bump up from SDHC and it's not more expensive either; but it won't fit in the T1i we're discussing today, nor many of its cousins).

For the average user, paying as much for memory cards (which are quickly superceded by better, faster models) as for lenses makes no sense.

Pricing breakdown: How many dollars per gigabyte?
I wanted three cards (more on that at the end; see Conclusion). Here's the pricing off Adorama's Camera, with the rebates factored in (the rebates are linear, i.e. buying three cards gives you three rebates, and they can be stacked for each card):

SDHC Class 6 Extreme III, three 8 GB cards, 20 MByte/sec
99.95 / 24
4.16 dollars / gigabyte (24 gigabytes)

SDHC Class 6 Extreme III, three 4 GB cards, 30 MByte/sec
74.95 / 12 GB
6.25 dollars / gigabyte (12 gigabytes)

We're getting closer to the conclusion, don't worry! In terms of a straightforward dollar / gigabyte ratio, sure, the 20 MByte/second version wins. However, you see that your unit cost is lower; this holds for the three-pack by $15. Not gonna break the bank, but consider that the 12 GB cards are also faster than the 20 MByte/second ones, which are only 2/3 the speed of the 30 MByte/second cards.

Factor in that speed, and the price evens out.

Factor in a realistic working environment
Well, that's a bit messy. I haven't tried out the movie mode, which could be the definitive point - but I can say that the 30 MB/second edition will soak in data faster than the 20 MByte/sec cards can, so at best it doesn't change my analysis for the 20 MByte/sec edition. At worst, the 20 MByte/sec edition could prove too slow for shooting continuous videos.

What I can say is that 12 GB has proven enough for days of experimental shooting for me - I haven't even touched the final card. In a situation where I had to shoot a lot of pictures and didn't have quick access to a PC, I'd be very happy for all three cards. All things being equal, the double capacity of the 8 GB cards would finish this contest off. But the market has pushed the price of the 4GB cards down considerably; it's $15 less out of your pocket (after the rebate) and they're faster. This extra speed is very handy for a faster workflow.

Depending on your personal computer, you'll probably find that 20 MByte/sec is already fast enough for you - theoretically it'll load up those previews on your computer quicker than anything you're used to. If you're using a USB to miniUSB cable and USB 2.0 slots, you'll find that the data connection is wide enough (at 60 Mbytes/sec) not to be a bottleneck, and on a good computer they'll probably load at just about one second. I find that the 30 MByte/second card pause for loading the 5MB full-resolution JPEGs is just short enough to avoid being an annoyance. It lets me quick-flip between pictures and compare them - although the better practice would be to load each preview into its own separate window (i.e. Irfanview versus Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, Windows XP's image "preview" application).

Of course, all bets are off if you have a terrible old PC. On a 1.7 GHz Celeron with 1GB of RAM, it takes many seconds to load previews (and they're less easily flipped through as well).

Conclusion
Ultimately, I'm glad I paid less in total for the 4 GByte cards, and it's nice that they're faster. But smart workflow procedures (namely, loading each preview into its own window, and putting pictures onto a semi-modern hard drive for detailed work) should remove the speed advantage of the 30 GByte-second format for all purposes but possibly file transfers (2/3 speed is not likely to break your patience) and possibly movie shooting.

The question you need to ask, then, is: Am I going to need more than 127 pictures on each card? Answering that question will point you towards the answer.

Of course, if you're shooting lower-quality or lower-resolution shots, or not using RAW, by all means go with what's cheapest since shooting just the large, high-quality JPEGs will give you 600 shots, and the hobbyist shooter is not likely to need more than that. The T1i isn't fast enough in burst shooting to use that much quickly.

You could play a game of "egg consolidation" (all the eggs in fewer baskets) by going for two 20 MByte/sec cards, and you'd be saving money over my choice while still having 4GB more space, but I liked the three-card bundle better because the extra space wasn't really necessary. Turns out that's about exactly the right amount of storage for me - 3 cards will span me roughly three days of normal project shoots, and would do me well for one long, very tiring day-long shoot, something like being at the best theme park in the world (your choice; I'll pass, personally) from sunup to sundown.

If you're generally tethered to your home and just use a camera for short nature walks and local excursions, you might get by with just two cards if you want a baseline level of redundancy to avoid being unable to shoot for a while if one goes bad. You can invest the savings towards getting an efficient three-platter 1-terabyte hard drive! Even the savings from one card will cover a significant part of such an expense.

A final note about monitor resolution
Without consciously dividing the resolution, I noticed my 1600x1200 monitor shows roughly 1/9 of the photo when zoomed in all the way (and indeed it does, as the images are 4752x3168), so I can use the elevator scroll bars as if they only had three positions each and not miss any of the picture - in fact there's a little overlap which roughly covers for the loss to the Windows Taskbar and title bars. Nice! For this camera, that is the minimum monitor resolution you should be working on (caveats about lower DPI to save your eyes apply, however; I'm looking at roughly a 21" monitor size). Of course, 1920x1200 is the future, but that's another blog post, isn't it?

The after-show party

No more photos yet - for that I apologize. Read to the bottom for the reason why (or just consider it's 1:23 AM locally; 4:23 my home time).

At the party: Lots of noise but a fair number of the cast members. I thought they had us driving into a warehouse - just an open-air affair with some gas lamps for heat here and there. I saw the big dude (Hugo?) from Lost as we were getting ready to make a u-turn for leaving the car off at valet parking, and I'd see him a few more times before we were done. No Mrs. Nimoy or Sulu, but I saw Walter Koenig a few times in the area with a roof. A couple of the new Trek core cast members (Sulu, possibly Scotty) seemed to be hanging out in the center of the outdoors area.

Obviously, I have a ton of photos to go through sometime. After a pretty relentless movie (I was thinking, while watching the film, that the video game adaptation couldn't possibly keep up the pace), and then a big party.

Big dang speakers all over the place, with a deejay up on a platform happily banging away. I caught some bass-heavy remixes of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" and "You Turn Me Right Round."

The big attraction, aside from rubbing elbows (hah) with cast members (who I didn't even want to bother with a flash) was the photo booth. Basically dress-up with toy blasters and flip-open tricorders and such - made in China with copyright dates of 2009. I think people were picking up early samples of the mass-market toys we'll be seeing for the movie.

You can check out pictures of the photos (many starring celebrities!) here:

www.politeinpublic.com/star-trek/premiere/

Can you figure out which one is mine?

On the way out, they were passing out collectable glasses: Uhura, Spock, Kirk, and the bad guy. Almost took the bad guy's glass because they didn't seem to have passed out any, but the guy at the table said they'd just restocked. What the hell, I took Kirk's glass. I'll definitely be arranging for some stuff to be shipped home from our next hotel: glass, four popcorn buckets (heh), and various other stuff.

I almost forgot to mention they had three people in suits: the Burger King as a Klingon (!)

Next time, I'll try to finally get some more pictures up. I'm afraid browsing through a bunch of blurry no-flash compact camera pictures at this hour will provoke a little twinge in my left brow into a full-on headache.

(Edit 6/16/09: added tags)

I just got out of the movie.

The last time I saw an advance screening of a film was in advance of the summer '02 blockbuster - Spiderman. That was definitely a cool movie, and I remember the cheer during the "messing with New York" scene.

The viewing crowd was clapping and cheering at least five times during this movie - loudly. I don't know how they did it - sheer length perhaps (I believe we got out at 10 PM, and they started at 7:30 - after maybe ten minutes of speeches, a very flat one by some Paramount exec, and then J.J. Abrams who gave a somewhat less flat one), but it didn't feel long at all - but this movie seems to be packed past the gills with action. Maybe twice as much action, and they managed to add in the contemplative moments as well.

Without spoiling everything (yet - I'll try to give as close to a scene-by-scene synopsis as I can), here's how I felt.

They start the thing off with backstory sequences - Kirk's dad is killed by a strange ship sporting unknown and advanced weapons; Kirk and Spock as kids; Captain Pike convinces a young, underachieving Kirk into Starfleet after a bar brawl that I thought would end with a knife in Kirk's heart (wrong Trek captain). "It's yours," Kirk says as he flips the keys to his motorbike to a Starfleet shuttle attendant in Iowa. Scenes in Starfleet - more character building, Kirk with Uhura's green-skinned Orion dormmate. The Kobayashi Maru scenario, ending with an expulsion hearing that gets interrupted by a distress call from Vulcan and the immediate mobilization of the whole class of cadets.

There were points, up to this part, that struck me as pretty cheesy. Indeed, they continue throughout the movie, but with the action in this thing they later become punchlines and gasps of air between sequences in what is the most relentless film I've seen in a long while.

This is certainly a Trek movie for a new generation, and so for that reason it wouldn't feel right calling it the best Trek (anything) yet. I remember watching the "Why does God need a starship" scene as a kid fondly, however; the overall effect of the film is to challenge even the Trek expert into noticing the nods to what is actually an alternate history of Trek in a highly enjoyable way - while presenting a film with a hell of a kick. Lots of kicks, sustained.

Good grief. After-party next and then I suppose I'll go have a heart attack. I'll have to see if any of my pictures came out (no surrepetitious filming of the movie screen here, sorry!)

(Edit 6/16/09: added tags)

Star Trek premiere in Los Angeles: Buildup

The Star Trek movie premiere will be at 7:00 PST. I'll be here. I've been taking photos as often as possible. Here's a little sampling of the photos I've come up with so far.

First, the mandatory "look, the Hollywood(land) sign" image, made ugly through the power of a Olympus subcompact camera. This is taken from the approach to Griffith Observatory in the hills of Griffith Park, east and slightly north of the center of Hollywood. The Star Trek Voyager (oh boy) episode "Future's End" was filmed here (that's the one from the 90s, and so that's all I can tell you). I left the hills in the front to give some impression of the semi-desert area you see in "Shore Leave" and some of the other original Trek episodes; turns out that wasn't filmed here.

Inside the Observatory is the "Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater," which is showing something or other. Watched something else in the main planetarium instead - their system is definitely state of the art with full-color graphics over the dome, a star sphere, and individually tracked points (like planets) all at the same time. The show had water in the title, but the tickets
they printed off read "Centered in the Universe," which was showing later.

Here's an ABC News van careening into the blocked-off area in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. See the "ELT" in the distance on the left, near the very top of the frame? That's the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. My room's window looks out from the other side - same street, but not towards the theater.

I heard the security people out there right now are misdirecting people into a coffee shop for the roll call tickets. Roll call for tickets starts at 5:45, but I'll be down there at 5:30 just to avoid a gigantic crush for tickets.

The last three pics are from the corner Roosevelt is sitting on - directly under the Roosevelt in the ABC Truck picture, looking towards the viewer. Workers setting up some walls - possibly some music event that seems unrelated to the actual premiere.

Check this space after the premiere (and I guess the following party - ?) for my impressions of the movie, if I can stay awake long enough to post 'em.

Wikipedia

Some of Wikipedia's finest writing and reporting appears in the Wikipedia Signpost, which I find myself reading with some frequency in between Daikatana play sessions - in spite of my better judgment. There is a void in every person's soul which must be constantly filled with a steady stream of gossip and minutiae. Logically speaking, it seems amusing to write this mundane tendency off as a "survival trait" when the result - sitting in one's overstuffed (or, in my case, blood flow-restricting) computer chair for excessive amounts of time.

You can imagine, then, that I drew in a sharp breath when my computer-weakened corneas fixed on the following statement in the latest Signpost:

"Admin Jiang ... was indefinitely blocked and desysopped after deleting the main page. Jiang admitted on his user talk page that his password was "fuckyou", which is one of the most commonly used passwords."

In the computer world, loss of the virtual self is tantamount to death. Writing sentences like this is tantamount to taking out shares in Freud, LLC (currently trading for pennies over the counter). Ah, where was I going with this? Too blasted late to think straight. That's rare for me; usually my mysterious statements are conscious experiments in surrealism.

Definitely rethink having "fuckyou" as a password.

I've got a bit on my mind. Big eBay auction about to expire. Need to look up a real college to attend (or at least a more realer one than I'm at now). Gotta get some small CFL bulbs for my ceiling lamp. Tomorrow, I'm going to be sitting in on a presentation to provide emergency tech help on a power point if so needed (yes, I should have written up some information on my volunteer work for this summer, but that's alright; next time!) Thinking still about the FBI and Peltier. Got my good computer working again - no idea what the problem was, although I've now connected the fan. Didn't realize that the PSU (power supply) I replaced was a 500 Watt Seasonic (with an Antec Truepower Trio capable of pushing out 550W, which loses all sorts of cool points for being a Best Buy purchase - I will say that it at least shouldn't be less efficient than the Seasonic; both are marketed as being "up to 85% efficient") until today when I glanced at the box - I had thought that I went with a 430W model again. I should offer to replace somebody's 430W PSU with that one, then (I'm not about to switch back to the Seasonic because the wires are messier than in the Antec, which I have bundled up just the way I like).

Fallout

The name is, ironically, quite appropriate; there has been a steady flow of negativity towards Bethesda ever since they began work on resurrecting this classic franchise.

I recently wrote (on May 5th, but didn't publish) my own thoughts on the development of the series:

When the Fallout 3 forums recently opened I generated a new password and made my first posts at the Bethesda Forums (I had created an account the week before Shivering Isles was released, but never used it and forgot my password). What resulted was a learning experience for me. The immediate result I took out of it was a reminder of the depths of devotion - and strictness - that some hardcore gamers hold for their beloved developers. I also was reminded of the many areas in which The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion could be improved.

What was not evident to me was that I had reversed roles. When old and new collide I generally find myself on the side of tradition, because most of the time I was at times stridently [anti-Koji Igarashi, the current head of the Castlevania series].

Boy, how times change.

Since then, I've mellowed out a bit. Casual gamers need some love too, and I don't begrudge the Pokemon gang their new Castlevania games quite like I used to.

Also, there was a slight incident on the FO3 forums on the 8th. I made a post for giving away (ahem, community building exercise) free RAD/Away. RAD/Away, in real life, is a product for filtering liquids. You can't use it on your own blood, at least not easily. I then changed it to Neumune. Poof, topic deleted. Turns out a mod thought I was glorifying drug culture. To be honest, I thought it was amusing more than anything else.

Tonight I went with plan 2: Free Iguana-on-a-Stick! Strangely enough, I was counting on the first post to be exactly what was actually written, although as you can see I made only slight comedic use of the opportunity. Fans who know every last line...you've gotta love 'em.

Oh, right...a question, then: The "real" Rad-Away, Neumune, is not addictive in the least (you may feel the panicky urge to use it when rads are flowing throughout your system, but we cannot attribute this to any psychotropic effect of the actual drug!). Why is the product addictive in Fallout, then? I blame the military/industrial complex, an idea that the Fallout games make explicit use of. Simple enough. Hmm, addicted soldiers...somehow, I'm not convinced that this is a scheme the Pentagon would've been that complicit with, but who knows in the world of Fallout.

Auctions, lightbulbs, and dim bulbs

First post here, but I see no reason to make it too epic.

First order of business: I just listed one of my first gaming treasures, a copy of Akumajo Dracula for X68000, on eBay: link. Lucky me, I've got a spare.

Next up; I've finally replaced a lot of the sixty-watt (and some 100-watt) light bulbs around the house with 23 and 30 watt Sylvania compact flourescent lights. The 23W lights are advertised as being the equivalent of a 60W bulb, but I found that the 30W ('100W replacement') bulbs are closer to a 60W clear bulb (although the light emitted is clearly nicer, being bluer and less yellowish - the shorter wavelength makes reading easier). The new bulbs do get very hot to the touch but take longer to do so. They don't get as hot as the old bulbs, of course, which pour out oppressive amounts of heat as soon as they are switched on. They seem to stay warm longer as well.

Unfortunately, you'll also find that they don't fit in places the old 60W standby did. Sylvania's 23W is no bigger around than the old 60W bulb, but the corkscrew design doesn't taper around like the bulbs did. As a result, I can't put that particular variety in my ceiling lamp, which has a glass plate over it. I might be able to find a stick variety; I hope I will. The 30W (100W equivalent) is bigger in diameter (between one and two centimeters more in diameter, I think) and thus is even less versatile.

Watt for watt the new lights definitely beat out the old ones, but I'm somewhat disappointed that I wasn't able to get cold cathode CFLs - lights hanging under constant heavy foot traffic (say, in a basement) are going to get knocked out quite often, and CFLs are reportedly more resistant to this than an incadescent, but not as much as a cold cathode light. Of course, I would really like LED lights, because mercury freaks me out.

Last bit: It seems that Blizzard has put up job postings for development of some sort of Starcraft MMO, maybe a Starcraft game. I would think that they are going to try either something with a strategic element or perhaps real-time action gameplay. I'd say strategic gameplay would be a great idea, and while it seems counterintuitive for a MMO, I think it could be done with squads. Another idea being floated (less likely, I'd say) is that it'll play something like Huxley, i.e. Starcraft: Ghost.

I refuse to believe that the people at Blizzard really think that they need another standard WoW-style MMO. That would end up cannibalizing users from WoW who want a change of scenery, and would give up the chance to stake out new territory in the MMO genre. We'll have to wait and see.

Tune in next time for Fallout 3: My adventure on Bethesda's boards, and my current thinking about this series.